


Liability

by lilithduvare



Category: Original Work
Genre: All Boys School, Assassins & Hitmen, Attempt at Humor, Bad Parenting, Boys Being Boys, Drug Use, Exploiting People, Firs Love, Friendship, Graphic Torture, Growing Up, High School, Kickass Women in Power, M/M, Mild D/s, Neglect, Power Imbalance, Pranks, Racism, Russian Mafia, Slow Burn, Teenagers, There will be romance, Underage Boys Experimenting, Verbal Abuse, awkward fumbling, mob, oblivious idiots, rich kids, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-07 08:59:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18617407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithduvare/pseuds/lilithduvare
Summary: Rhys Martinez's life is a giant cliché.He is the darling son of Governor Martinez, gorgeous, smart, rich and powerful despite only just starting his third year at Edison Academy, one of the most prestigious all boys school in the United States, but he is bored out of his mind and wishes he could simply disappear.He can't find it in himself to care about anything after the giant mess of the previous year and he has no plans to interfere with whatever torture his classmates will decide to come up with to chase away the poor soul chosen to replace their previous Literature teacher.Dmitri Armand seems just like the perfect target - painfully young, geeky looking and pathetically optimistic -, someone who wouldn't last a week let alone a year under the tender care of Edison's finest. Or so Rhys thinks. But Armand seems to hide more than a pair of dangerously cold eyes behind his dorky glasses, and Rhys, for the first time since his father exiled him to Edison at the tender age of 12, feels a glimmer of curiosity take hold of him. Because danger and mysteries? Are just shy behind control on the short list of things he craves. And once he wants something, he never stops until he gets it.





	1. Rhys

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys,
> 
> so this is not an update of my fics but an original story from me. A good chunk of it is already posted on Wattpad but thought I would share it here as well, hoping you would enjoy the story of the characters who live in my head and learn to like them just as much as I do. I listed 'Power Imbalance' among the tags but this is not a teacher/student story and there will be no sexual relationship between and underage and adult characters, so when the tags say Slow Burn then really get ready for the slow burn because this will be a story about plot, growing up and friendship with romance as a secondary issue altogether. 
> 
> Also, this is a story inspired by the manga Gokusen, so if you find the base idea familiar then that's why.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you'll like it, I will update this story on Saturdays, but if you have Wattpad and want to read ahead you can check it out here:  
> https://www.wattpad.com/story/183315150-liability

**Rhys**

 

Rhys groans when a heavy weight lands on his back and a godforsaken screeching noise nearly busts his eardrums. He shrugs his shoulders and turns his head to the side to glare at his assailant, his gaze meeting with the dark brown glittering of Thommy Prescott’s eyes and wide grin.

“You’re heavy,” he deadpans, making Thommy’s grin spread even further if possible. Rhys tries to glare harder, but Thommy just laughs and ruffles his hair before he finally gets off Rhys back.

“You heard?” Thommy asks, all excitement and little attention to his surroundings. “We’re getting new teachers. Some freshies were already babbling about two young bombshells, so I hope we’ll be the lucky ones to get one of them for homeroom.”

The two of them are one of the few non-dorm living students who don’t take a car to school. The long line of flashy cars always seemed tacky to Rhys and he hated waiting in line for his turn to finally get out in front of the school’s entrance just to show off his family’s influence and money. It was pathetic when he was twelve, just starting Edison, and it seems even more pitiful now that he is nearly seventeen. So, he has been walking the small distance between his condo and the school ever since he was fifteen and officially entered senior high school. Thommy just chose to follow his example after he refused the offer of a ride, when Thommy mistakenly thought there was something wrong with their car—as if the Martinez family didn’t have several of them he could use if he wanted. Their group of friends laughed at first, teasing Rhys about slumming it up with the dorm-kids, but it became old news pretty fast and now, nearly two years later, no one really noticed or cared anymore.

Looking up at Thommy’s excited face, Rhys bites back a fond smile. He doesn’t know much about the new teachers, but he would bet that the principal would never assign their group a young woman as their homeroom teacher. Correction, the principal would never assign a young woman as any kind of teacher to the entire senior academy student body. Still, he doesn’t share his thoughts with his friend. He needs something that will make the day at least marginally interesting if predictable. Not that he really cares, but he’s fed up with being constantly bored yet unable to escape.

“What do you think, Rhys?” Thommy asks with a huge smile. “Who will tag the new teach first?”

Tag.

He wanted to sneer at the distasteful tradition that was established when the first female teacher was hired at the academy. It involved the students pulling no stops to put their tag on the new teacher by seducing her and showing evidence of bedding her. It was demeaning yet never explicitly banned besides firing the teacher every time the game was won by someone. The only attempt at putting a stop to the sick tradition was made by the current principal who hasn’t hired a female faculty member under fifty since her appointment much to the students’ disappointment.

“Do your best and you could do the honors,” he says instead of voicing his real thoughts. He knows it would only take a few well aimed words to make all his friends forget about participating in the game, but Rhys never cared enough about teachers to prevent any prank his classmates pulled. “But let’s not ignore the off-chance that we get some old hag or a guy.”

“Oh, yeah! You always think of everything!” Thommy exclaims with a laugh just as they walk through the automatic glass doors and instantly get mobbed by the rest of their group.

“Who’s excited to get some fresh meat?” James croons, wrapping himself over Thommy’s shoulder even though he has to rise onto his tiptoes to reach them. He winks at Rhys with a saucy smirk.

“I’m sure you’re dying to get to play the bad student, Hudson,” Mark retorts snidely, adjusting his thick black glasses. “That pathetic virginity of yours must be burning a hole into your pants.”

“You’re mistaking me for yourself, Goodman. I hear that fiance of yours has your balls in a jar on her bedside table,” James snaps back, his smile turning nasty.

“Leave Laura out of this!”

“Why? Can’t take some hard truths?”

“Guys!” Ryley cuts in, his deep voice commanding attention. “It’s our first day back, can we not start it with bloodshed?”

“But he started it!” James whined. “Rhys, tell him!”

“Whatever.” Rhys shrugs. “Didn’t you want to be first to the classroom?”

“Oh yeah! I want a first row seat!” Thommy says with a dreamy sigh.

“Yeah, what the giant says,” James hums and gets off Thommy’s back. “I grilled some of the freshies and they said that the woman they saw was a real looker. Legs a mile high, tight little—”

“What about the new guy?” Rhys asks, quietly steering the conversation away from the gutter James has been steadily falling into.

“He’s some snot-nosed nerd. At least that’s what two sophomores who took the elevator said. You think we should welcome him accordingly?” Mark’s smirk is downright devious, the cogs already turning behind his thick lenses.

Rhys hums noncommittally but the seed is already planted. He places his hand on the scanner and the gate lets him through easily. While he waits for the others he checks his school assigned tablet for the second time that morning to make sure he got the classroom right. Room 17 in Edison Wing.

It’s the English classroom.

Rhys knows that they had a problem finding a replacement after Mulligan was fired. The temp Peterson told them that he’s not staying during their last class and handed in his resignation on the last day of term, but Administration hasn’t updated the faculty list yet, so it’s been impossible to guess who their new homeroom teacher will be. Which must have been Pratt’s intention all along, holding up the suspense and preventing the students from creating too much havoc because they would all want to get into the new female teachers’ good graces.

What a nasty old hag. Nasty but brilliant old hag.

Rhys hides a smile in his chin as they get into the elevator and pushes the button for the third floor. The others are still plotting, trying to figure out what prank to pull that wouldn’t get them behind in the game if it was actually one of the female teachers they got assigned. Which is the reason they don’t notice which room they are headed for until they walk right into the mids of a circus.

“Wait second.” Thommy stops and backs right out the door to check the plate next to it. “The English room? I thought we made sure that creeper got booted!”

“Thommy boy, English is still a mandatory class for four years,” James quips, patting Thommy’s shoulder when he steps next to him. “With a little luck, the new English teach is one of the bombshells the freshies were gushing about.”

Rhys heads to his desk in the back corner of the room, easily avoiding collision with a bunch of their classmates, who start hitting each other with their books, fighting over the front row seats. He really doesn’t see the appeal in crowding around the teacher, begging for attention. He drops his bag next to his seat and sinks into the stuffed chair he’s seen as his for the past two years. Lowering his head onto his forearm on the top of the table and does his best to ignore the cacophony around him, slowly slipping into the welcome familiarity of daylight haze that has been his companion through his entire school career.

He vaguely notices the sudden silence that befalls the room when the bell sounds and a moment later the door opens, but doesn’t bother to raise his head. It’s not like the new teacher holds the slightest interest to him whether they are male or female. When the first groans of disappointment reach his ears, Rhys opens one of his eyes to see what kind of old geezer got the short end of the stick to be saddled with their useless bunch, and gets the first surprise of the day when he sees a young boy that looks barely a few years older than them.

Rhys blinks slowly but he isn’t dreaming. The man standing in front of the interactive board is young, barely in his twenties, with thick rimmed glasses and a knitted vest—the epitome of useless. Rhys doesn’t give him a week before he runs. The thought makes him sneer in derision and he lets himself sink back into his boredom induced lethargy.

Only to be snapped to attention by a sharp whistling sound. “Now that I have your attention,” the teacher says with a wide smile, ignoring the hostile air in the classroom, “my name is Dmitri Armand and I’m going to be—”

“Shut the hell up!” Thommy snaps, his voice deepened into a growl. “No one gives a fuck who you are.”

“Yeah, right!” Mark adds with his usual arrogance. “Just give us our passing marks like every other idiot at this useless ‘academy’.”

Rhys expects the guy to get outraged like most newbies do when they get the official welcome from the student body. He waits for the indignant protests and even threats about taking them to the principal. It doesn’t come. Instead the guy, smiles wider and perches himself on the corner of his desk, raising one of his brows.

“Ah, but that’s something you have to work for, I’m afraid,” he replies, perfectly calm and cheerful, earning snarled threats and curses. Someone even lobs an eraser at his head but he just catches it mid-flight and puts it down next to him, still grinning like a total idiot. “Now that we cleared that up. Any other questions? I’m here to help you with anything you need.”

“Then help me hide a body!” Brandon Mitchell jeered. “Had to off my old man for being a giant dick!”

“Put it in a barrel of hydrochloride acid or lye and then let it get shipped off by one of the garbage disposal ships.” Rhys feels his eyes widen at the completely deadpan answer, his focus narrowing in on the suddenly blank faced man.

Armand’s entire posture has changed. His slouch is gone, replaced by squared shoulders, which look wider than they did only a moment ago, and a glint seems to appear in his magnified pale eyes. For just a second he reminds Rhys of a predator, lethal and ruthless. Then the moment is gone and the gullible idiot is back with an awkward laugh and innocently bitten lips.

“I mean that’s how they do it in those mobster movies, right?” He giggles, rubbing the back of his neck, ruffling his blond hair.

The class boos and tells him that he sucks, but before the guy could come up with any answers the bell rings and Homeroom is over. No one spares a second glance at their new teacher before flowing out the door. Rhys feels oddly disappointed and bereft and doesn’t understand why, but he refuses to mull over it. Teachers will always be teachers, incompetent, judgmental and useless. A second of could have been intrigue won’t change that.

“Everything okay, Rhys?” Thommy asks as they take the stairs one floor down to their shared AP Calculus class. Thommy pretends to not be the sharpest tool in the shed but he has a way with numbers not even Rhys can match, and despite his bravado he hopes to go into mechanical engineering.

“Yeah, just bored,” Rhys replies with a shrug, earning a back slap that nearly sends him face first on the floor. He glares at his friend who can only grin sheepishly.

“Oops?” Thommy says holding his hands up in defense. “Still learning my way around the extra thirty pounds and six inches.”

“Yeah, you’re a giant. I think everyone got the memo,” Rhys grumbles, refusing to rub at the sore spot.

“Aww come on, we’re nearly the same height!” Thommy’s grin only widens at the glare Rhys shoots him. “But really, what’s four inches? Unless we’re talking about a different kind of—”

“Please spare both of us the embarrassment of finishing that sentence.”

“Are you implying I have a small dick?” Thommy’s eyes narrow and Rhys smirks up at him but doesn’t reply. “Rhys, are you?”

“Would I ever do that?”

“You would and you know it, you jerk.”

“Hmm… yeah, you’re right. But the question is, did I?” With a wink, Rhys walks into the Math lab and takes a seat, ready to sleep through yet another class.

Thommy drops down next to him, still fuming and ignoring their teacher as the old bastard tells them that the syllabus has been sent to their devices the day before and should have been already studied carefully. Traum is an ancient dickwad that always expects the impossible to be the standard and then yaps like a dog when he’s let down.

“Mr. Martinez, stop slouching and pay attention!” Traum snaps at him, his white brow framed stare attempting to be culling but only makes Rhys want to curl his lips in disgust. The man is an even bigger moron than Rhys thought if he still thinks that anything would change after two years just because they are in AP Calculus now.

“You think the stick up the geezer’s ass is barbed or something?” Thommy whispers when Traum turns towards the old-fashioned white board and starts writing. Projectors and smart boards are obviously beyond his capacity. He launches into an explanation on limits and continuity, because who needs reviewing last year’s material after over two months of not touching a single book?

“Who knows?” Rhys replies noncommittally, glaring at his empty desktop. He doesn’t care about all the bullshit the teacher is spewing. Honestly, he doesn’t even know why he decided to take the course after the absolute torture Pre-Calc had been.

Oh right.

His father.

“I’m surprised no one glued on the cap of his markers,” Thommy goes on, undeterred. “Then again look at all these nerds wagging their tails for a bone. Pathetic.”

“Anything to add, Mr. Prescott?” Traum cuts in sharply and the class around them starts murmuring. Rhys can’t hear what they say but he can guess. After all there is a reason why their group is always assigned the same classroom. They are the black sheep of the prestigious Edison Academy, hooligans who can’t appreciate how fortunate they are for being born rich and important. Deviants who are hellbent on bringing shame to their precious families’ names. Ass-kissing drones, the lot of them.

Thommy obviously doesn’t care. He never has. He simply smiles wide and bright, looks at the board for a second or maybe two, then says, “Yeah, Dr. Traum, I have actually. There is an error in the third formula you listed. It’s actually a property. Just saying.”

Rhys feels his lips twitch at the way everyone is suddenly studying the board with an intensity usually only spared for investment portfolios and smuggled porn magazines. Traum is nearly gaping at Thommy, his face turning into an unflattering puce color, but when he looks at his list of formulas he can’t counter Thommy’s argument. Thommy flashes a winning smile at the gaping teacher then turns to Rhys and winks.

“You think our new English teach will be this easy?”

“Should be a piece of cake.” Rhys doesn’t know why his words feel like a lie. Maybe the man’s strange momentary behavior left a deeper impression than he’s comfortable to admit.

“What are you planning?” Thommy nudges him playfully, ignoring the teacher once again.

“Just a little fun,” Rhys replies with a smirk and a raised eyebrow, but it sounds hollow to his ears—more bravado than truth.

Frowning down at his lap, he tries to figure out what it is about the slip of a man that leaves him unsettled. For all his little show, Armand came across as a fool; young and full of enthusiasm that would fade in a few days when he realizes that his dream job is nothing but a hoax. Rhys and his friends have had front row seats to watch as goodwill and liveliness left every new teacher within the first week since they started their studies at Edison.

The teachers despise them, even the ‘good students’, for being born privileged and rich enough to get away with everything. They resent them for being saddled with their care, for getting calls over things that should be dealt with their families. They keep claiming they didn’t sign up for this, that they were tricked, and find the most underhanded ways to dole out punishment.

Like Mulligan did.

Thank God the sick bastard is gone now, and he’s sure the new teacher won’t last much longer either. None of the new ones do. And if Armand tries anything like Mulligan did, disappearing him in a barrel of lye shouldn’t be that hard, should it?

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Dmitri**

 

Dmitri adjusts his dorky, but supposedly fashionable, tortoiseshell glasses, grimacing at his reflection. He doesn’t feel ready to teach anyone anything, let alone a bunch of spoiled young princes at one of the States’ most prestigious all boys academy. Hell, he doesn’t even feel like an adult. What happened to being an over-worked undergrad student scrambling to finish ridiculous essays twenty minutes before the deadline? He doesn’t know what his professors at Columbia’s Teacher College were smoking to think it was a good idea to give him a degree, a master’s at that, but they must have been out of their minds because Dmitri is definitely not ready.

“Are you going to stand there all day or are you going to put on your big girl panties and do your shiny new job?” 

“My big girl panties are on, already cutting off my circulation,” he snarks back, shooting Carmen a scathing glare from the mirror before it melts into a jagged grin. 

Carmen’s dark red lips stretch wide as she walks closer, her lusciously curved hips swaying in the wake of her stiletto aided steps, and then there is a hand on the top of his head, patting it like he’s five years old instead of nearly twenty-five, using her heels enhanced 6’6” against his shorter height. Dmitri scowls, but it’s only for show. They’ve known each other all his life. Carmen is like an older sister to him, even if he once offered to marry her. He was fourteen and she seemed like the perfect choice to succeed his grandmother as head of the family. Her reply was laughing at him and giving him his first kiss.

Even now he is aware that Carmen would be a better choice than him despite the lack of blood relation, but he’s the heir and he knows his duties. He knows that a time will come when his grandmother will step down and he will have to fill her impossibly large shoes. But for now he can enjoy his life as a high school teacher, passing on his love for books and reading.

“You can still back out, you know,” Carmen says, her dark eyes watchful as she studies him.

“I can do this,” Dmitri says, pushing as much certainty into his tone as he can. “It’s been my dream since I was a kid. I’m not going to give up an opportunity like this just because of my stupid brain.”

“Good, then tell your ‘stupid brain’ to shut the fuck up and get going. Or you’re going to be late on your first day,” Carmen responds, pinching his cheeks, hard.

He bats her hands away and looks into his reflected pale gray eyes, willing himself to shake off his idiocy. He gives himself a tight nod then straightens his starched collar and turns away from the mirror. He can do this. Carmen hums and pats his shoulder, her dark red lips stretched wide. It’s her way to say, “Good luck.”

He refuses the offered car with a shake of his head when he sees Bree hovering by the elevator. She rolls her large, deceptively innocent eyes at him when he tells her that no one drives in the city. “Yeah that’s why there is always traffic.”

“Another reason not to take the car.”

“Oh shut up.” She swats at him, her fist hiding strength her willowy body belies, but he manages to evade her the last moment and winks at her just as the elevator doors open. “If you kill the brats, just call. I’ll wait with the trunk open.”

Dmitri rolls his own eyes at that. He’s sure all his new students are little gentlemen in training. Spoiled beyond belief, but brimming propriety and eager to please their usually absent parents. Still, he smiles at Bree’s strange sense of encouragement and kisses her on the forehead, huffing a choked laugh when she drives her elbow into his stomach. 

“Shoo, Young Master. Teach them rich brats some manners.” Her grin is sharp, near feral, and for a second Dmitri allows his doubts to flood his mind once again. 

No, she is just teasing him.

Edison Academy is a prestigious all boy’s school for the heirs and sons of important people. So, his students should all be hard-working and polite and maybe even cute in a way. They will love him and he will do his best to further their knowledge and make them well-read and even more eloquent than they already are. 

Chewing on his lip he swipes his card at the subway gate, following the mass of people onto the platform, minding his own business. That’s the beauty of New York. No one cares about anyone. No one spares other people a second glance. Which makes people watching really easy if done right. And as an experienced hunter, Dmitri knows perfectly well how it is done right.

He occupies his mind with analyzing people around him, taking note of little things others would ignore. It’s a good way to divert his attention from going around in circles over how his first day would go. It doesn’t matter that he got the chance to give lectures to college freshmen before. Those chances were few and far between because his professor preferred doing his own work and only left grading to his TA. And his summer internships were always with elementary schools and kindergartens, never with the age group he was about to work with. 

He shakes his head, snorting to himself. So much for people watching. 

It takes about twenty minutes to reach his stop, and then another ten minute walk across the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge and by a gorgeously maintained park before he reaches the iron wrought gate of the Academy. It’s interesting to see all the expensive cars lined up, dropping off the non-boarders. Spending most of his high school years in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where schools are strict, especially for the elite, this amount of coddling seems unnecessary to him. Then again, he thinks, the elite always has to find a way to show off their power. And their children couldn’t be excluded from the rule it seems. 

Walking down the paved sidewalk, he wants to admire the grand glass and steel building that oozes a hyper-modern air and actually is horribly ugly. He has no idea who thought that some extravagant shopping mall lookalike thing would serve well as a high school, especially in the middle of a park with no other tall buildings around, but whoever it was obviously had no taste or sense of beauty at all. He sees groups of young men walking in groups ahead of him. They look happy and most of them have wide smiles on their lips, some of them laughing or horsing around with their friends. Their uniform is clean cut and nothing like the building; dark maroon blazer with white, starched shirts and dark gray ties to match the pressed trousers. The shoes are expensive leather, polished and most probably Italian. Dmitri hums admiringly and adjust his glasses. 

The automatic doors open to a huge atrium where leather sofas and overly stylish and probably useless chairs are organized in neat groups for the students and possible guests. A receptionist counter with three security gates completed with a palm scanners is waiting for the students to enter the main wing of the school. Dmitri heads for the counter, offering a wide smile to the young man watching his approach. 

He greets the man and hands over his Teacher’s ID card. The man’s own greeting is polite and professional if surprised for some reason. He types something into the computer in front of him before reaching over to a pile of leather cases on his right and lifts the top one. Opening the cover the case reveals a tablet which he turns on and then after a few types and swipes he hands over.

“All information you need can be found on this, Mr. Armand,” he says with a tight smile. “Your assigned class is Room 17 in the Edison Wing. Just go through one of the security gates and then take the second elevator from the left. It’s on the third floor.”

“Thank you, Mr.—” Dmitri trails off, waiting for the young man to introduce himself despite a shiny silver name plate claiming him to be ‘Frederick’.

The man blinks, taken aback, then a faint flush taints his cheeks as he says, “Lang, Mr. Armand. Frederick Lang.”

“Mr. Lang,” Dmitri repeats with a small nod and a wide smile. “Where do I find the teachers’ lounge?”

“Oh, y-yeah, sorry,” Mr. Lang stammers, his face even redder than before. “First elevator from the right, on the seventh floor.”

“Thank you.”

“You… You’re welcome, Mr. Armand. And good luck!” Lang calls after him when he steps up to one of the gates on the lest side of the reception desk and places his hand on the scanner. He throws another smile back over his shoulder just as the scanner beeps and the gate opens. 

Dmitri checks his watch, an old, cherished model that used to be his great-grandfather’s and was his birthday present from his great-grandmother when he turned eighteen.  Babushka Illya, who is actually his great-grandmother, sure knows how to make grand gestures. He still has half an hour before first period starts, but he quickens his steps, waving his way around the few early arrivals to reach the elevator because he should have been in the Teacher’s Lounge five minutes ago. A pity punctuality never has been his forte.

The two boys who get into the glass cage with him throw him failed sneaky glances, but the moment he turns towards them to offer a smile, they avert their gazes and choose to stare at their shoes instead. They seem young, maybe thirteen or fourteen at most, reminding Dyma that Edison serves both as a junior and senior high school. They get off before him, murmuring quiet ‘goodbyes’ as they scurry off, never sparing him a glance.

Dyma chuckles under his breath and watches as the floors pass bye, seeing mingling students in front of classrooms. They seem carefree but hold themselves different than most teenagers he’s seen before. Their backs are straight with their shoulders thrown back. Poised, as if ready to prove their worth to the world every second. It looks exhausting. And oh so familiar.

The elevator stops with a merry little ding and the glass doors slide open right into the Teacher’s Lounge much to Dmitri’s mortification. Every head turns in his way, and he can feel the principal’s sharp glare cutting through him even as he studiously keeps his attention on his new colleagues. 

“Good morning, Mr. Armand. I’m glad you finally managed to grace us with your presence,” Principal Pratt breaks the awkward silence just as Dmitri opens his mouth to greet everyone. 

Dyma feels proud that he manages to hold in the wince that zings at his spine. Josephine Pratt is a tiny woman with steel-like eyes, enhanced by stylish silver framed glasses and a bespoke suit. The lines around her discreetly painted mouth and at the corners of her eyes make her look even more severe, and Dmitri has no doubt she would have no problem forcing men five time her size to their knees. He knows inner strength. He sees it in action every day when he looks at his grandmother, Carmen and his great-gram. 

“I apologize for my tardiness, ma’am,” Dmitri says, his chin ever so slightly dipped to show he accepts Pratt’s position of power even as he meets the woman’s hard glare with a steady look. He doesn’t try to come up with excuses, having been taught that excuses were the escape of weak people. And Dmitri was anything but weak.

“Make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Pratt says after a few moments of tense silence. Dmitri does not make a promise he know he can’t hold. Pratt takes his silence for what it is, and waves him closer.

Dmitri nods to the five women standing next to the principal, noting their modest, nondescript outfits that almost matches his own with a small tilt of his lips. The woman next to him looks up at him with a quirked eyebrow and tries to mimic the principal’s severe expression, Dmitri’s smile widen.

“As I was saying, this year we welcome six new members in our team. Two of them will work with our junior academy members. Ms. Farrah will teach Mathematics and Ms. Han-Yeoh will teach Protocol and Etiquette.” The women step forward and nod their heads with small, empty smiles and rigid shoulders. They are obviously nervous, first day jitters threatening to get the best of them, but they push on with admirable strength and doesn’t submit to the inquisitive gazes watching them.

“I’m Gillian Farah. It’s an honor to get the chance to work in this institution,” Ms. Farrah says, humble and vying for acceptance. It’s disappointing. Her new colleagues greet her with detached professionalism, an air of barely concealed haughtiness oozing from them. 

Ms. Han-Yeoh follows her example, but her voice is more confident and her smile matches the faculty’s, issuing a silent challenge. She knows what she’s doing and obviously refuses to be beaten in her own game. Dmitri appreciates her daring personality and thinks they will get along just fine.

Principal Pratt goes on with the introductions, gesturing at the remaining three women after saying their names and department respectively. Dr. Tomoya the new Guidance Counselor, Dr. Yankovic the new Geography teacher and Dr. Farina the new Chemistry teacher are all empty smiles and vapid pleasantries, not even sparing Dmitri a glance when it becomes obvious he doesn’t have a PhD in his field. Considering he is only 24 and barely out of college with a double master’s in English Literature and Psychology under his belt, he can only bare his teeth the way he always does at social functions his grandmother expects him to attend on her arm. People always underestimate him, never looking beyond the image he presents them with.

When it’s his turn, he steps forward with a little grin and adjusts his glasses to show just the barest hint of weakness. “Good morning, my name is Dmitri Allen Armand. I’m looking forward to working with all of you.” The reflexive smiles he receives from the teachers seated in the neatly organized couches and armchairs are a promising first step to gain his co-workers’ trust. 

Principal Pratt’s clears her throat with a pinched expression and everyone’s attention snaps to her immediately. She waves her hand at the young man stood behind her, who nods quickly and hands over the tray of key cards he’s been holding all along.

“Every faculty member has their own offices where they are requested to hold open hours twice a week so students can approach them privately,” the principal says and holds out the tray and Dyma waits until all the other newbies pick up their keys before reaching for his own and slipping the little blue card into the front pocket of his knitted vest. “Once you set your office hours, inform Administration so they can post the time and days on the academy’s website. Any questions?”

“Is it necessary to hold office hours after classes end or can they be set before them as well?” Dr. Yankovic asks, her voice clipped with false patience. Dmitri would bet she’s one of those harpy type teachers who never have time to repeat things and refuse to wait for slower students to catch up.

“Office hours are strictly after classes end and cannot run longer than eight pm,” Principal Pratt snipes back, obviously not appreciating the tone Dr. Yankovic took with her. “Our students are busy and nearly all of them participate in extracurricular activities. However, do not forget that they are young men on the cusp of adulthood. They test their boundaries and are used to getting their ways due to their upbringing. While under the academy’s care, they are your responsibility. Act accordingly.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the faculty choruses.

“Good. Classes start in ten minutes. Tardiness is not tolerated.” She cuts another glare at Dmitri who smiles brightly and salutes, ignoring the annoyed but suspiciously amused sounding sigh that leaves the principal’s mouth.

He follows his colleagues to the elevator door, noting the way they group up. Ms. Han-Yeoh and Farrah are already chatting with a few of the other junior academy teachers, Ms. Farrah’s cheeks pink and her expression relieved. Ms. Han-Yeoh is smiling, too, but she is more reserved just like her greeting was. Dr Yankovic and Farina don’t disappoint either, standing together but apart from the other teachers, holding court to a small group of three elder looking men that are probably just as educated as they are. Dr. Tomoya has joined up with the only other female teachers in the staff. There are only five of them which is surprisingly few in a faculty of over thirty members. Then again, Edison has aways been one of those archaic schools that believed young men only profited from a man’s touch. The principal’s last words just confirmed it further.

Well, Dmitri never believed in such outdated ideas and he refuses to follow a tradition he holds little regard to. Hopefully, his students will appreciate it. 


End file.
